Desolation

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The neon lights were cutting through the deep black of the room, flashing in and out of existence as they illuminated countless bodies squirming in the dark. I squinted as the spotlights synchronized with the music, chasing the beat through highs and lows until I felt increasingly nauseated. I had to take a deep breath as they picked up speed yet again, briefly closing my eyes to keep the vomit down. It all peaked in an epilepsy inducing light show finale which made me wish I had just stayed home.

The speakers added to my suffering by almost blasting my eardrums out the other side of my brain. The trashy songs they insisted on playing bounced around the inside of my head, generic works they regularly played on Daimon Central, the main radio station down in Hades. They were nothing special, just some simple tunes a she-demon howled easily digestible lyrics to that continuously repeated themselves. It was so generic and bland; everyone could enjoy it if they had no standards.

If the music were not enough to revive my migraine, surely the sweet smell of alcohol and sweat that wafted through the air was going to trigger another. There was no escaping it and with every breath I was forced to draw, I got a colorful assortment of odors delivered straight to my brain which were quite revolting. The guy sitting next to me was especially potent, my eyes tearing up. As soon as I sat down at the bar, his cheap aftershave assaulted my senses, burning my nose hairs clean off.

The air itself was quite thick and stale, accompanied by distressingly high humidity. It was exactly as you would expect from a club hiding in the basement of some condemned, boarded-up house on the outskirts of Styx. The lack of windows made it impossible to introduce fresh oxygen to the room, trapping us all in the same concentrated funk passed down generations of visitors. You could almost taste the unwashed bodies from the night before, mingling with the new guests' musky armpits.

I gagged at the graphic thought settling inside my brain, reaching up to cover my lower face with the sleeve of my hoodie. I shifted my weight on the bar chair, getting a bit more comfortable on the worn cushion. It let out a horrific creak, the auditory equivalent of chewing sand chasing a shiver down my spine into the sole of my feet. The ghostly imprint was going to haunt my bones for hours to come, the aftermath of its attack still impacting my nervous system after I was safely back home.

I never understood how people could just casually exist without being assaulted by the sensory input surrounding us all, going about their lives as if it was simply a matter of how well they were coping with it. It was not, at least not for me. Every moment of my endless existence, the attacks kept hailing down on me without as much as a filter. It made me want to turn my skin inside out while I screeched like a harpy, communicating the pain the simply being alive caused me.

Unfortunately, displays as such were not too welcome and I had to train myself to compartmentalize the overstimulation, to minimize my feelings to survive in a world so dependent on social image. I stuffed all of it somewhere deep inside of me, hiding it until one day, it broke free in one gigantic outburst. It left me feeling constantly stressed, anxious and on edge but at least I could pass as somewhat normal. That is, if people did not pay too much attention to me.

Given that I kept everyone at least at an arm's length, no matter how hard they tried to weasel their way in, I was not running the dangers of exposing myself anytime soon. I could keep my unwanted personality traits a secret and hide in between the masses of boring, everyday personalities I used to shield myself from unwanted attention. As much as I could never become one of them, I could at least work hard to pretend. It was exhausting and non-fulfilling, but it was for the better.

Blowing my cover could prove detrimental to my little corner of the realm. I had barely built a life for myself in recent years, and I was not ready to lose it yet. Being viewed as the weirdo next door was going to attract a certain kind of attention that was hard to shake. People kept a closer eye on the loner that lacked a social circle, not because they were interested but in the back of the head, they knew something was wrong with you. And there was something very wrong with me.